So here we are, at the end of the second movie. This means I spent 46 strips in Fellowship, and 47 in Two Towers. I didn’t plan that, it just sort of worked out that way. Fellowship occupies 58 total pages, while Two Towers is 74 pages long.

Sure, it can be bad when you realize that one of your players has been zoning out during crucial moments. But, the real horror sets in when the players who have been paying attention try to explain, and their perception of your gameworld is so different from your intention that you almost don’t recognize it as your own.

Hmmm…The Curse Of The Attention-Span-Of-A-Goldfish Gamer strikes again!!
Although in this campaign, can you really blame him?

The films are easier to keep track of than the books though – I had to keep flicking back and forth just to keep track of the endless characters with the extremely similar names (even worse in the Silmarillion!)

I always like to hear the players discuss the story, because then I’ll know what I’m doing right. I’ve not had them outright hate a game, though. Even the stories I’ve hated, at least my players seem to enjoy it.

I’m as bad about remembering things like this as my players are sometimes, particularly when I’ve had to invent NPC’s on the fly or have a lot to keep track of. I try not to take my settings too seriously in the first place, so if they come up with some way to lampoon the villains (unavoidable with my friends) I tend to just laugh along with it. it’s entertaining and the alternative is being indignant, and that doesn’t help the game.

One of these days, you should do a strip where someone asks Why Are We Doing This Again, and the answer is, “Well if ya’d just STFU for a second and actually let the DM finish a segue description without covering it in a speech bubble, maybe you’d already know the answer. I’m just sayin’.”

[Dudes, we all (well, most of us) know how to count; there’s no need to proove it. :) ]

Alas, nothing breaks the GM’s heart faster than realizing the players are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons– or worse, for no reason.

Last time I DMed, I was fortunate to have interested players. Even so, while listening to their characters discuss recent events, I nearly axphixiated with keeping myself from blurting out corrections. At least I knew which red herrings they were fixated on, and could build them up appropriately. :)

In Call of Cthulhu if you don’t pay attention to the game, the DM will invariably put you into a situation where your character has to do a sanity check. On the other hand if you do pay attention to the game, your character might come out unscathed but *you* have to do the sanity check.

23: The distortion most likely occurs because the panels are not the same aspect ratio as the DVDs, so there’s going to be have to be some stretching or contracting. I’m guessing Shamus has a widescreen version, so in most panels, people are necessarily too thin.

“the real horror sets in when the players who have been paying attention try to explain, and their perception of your gameworld is so different from your intention that you almost don't recognize it as your own.”

Oh boy have we been there. We once devoted an entire game session to catching up on what the players were actually SUPPOSED to know by now in one particuarly intricate campaign. :)

There was a campaign I was in that I’m still not sure about what the heck happened in the larger plot arc. It didn’t help that we were also stuck in the “goofy character name” problem. At least the GM enojyed knowing what was what…

Don’t forget: The players playing Frodo and Sam went to play Star Wars. The players playing Merry and Pip had jobs and school and, possibly, lives. (See Episode XLIV). I too look forward to their return. I’m not sure how much Aragormless, Leg-o-Lamb, and Gimli will react.

I don’t think the hobbits are coming back, at least not the players. They’d probably have to be NPCs because the third movie has all those diverging story arcs, and it would be hard to be constantly shifting back and forth between them.

“But, the real horror sets in when the players who have been paying attention try to explain, and their perception of your gameworld is so different from your intention that you almost don't recognize it as your own”

That’s one of the reasons I like playing kenders, halflings, etc. I admit I don’t take notes on what the party is supposed to know, but not paying attention to what’s going on in the game is PERFECTLY in character.

“their perception of your gameworld is so different from your intention that you almost don't recognize it as your own.”

You said it, brother. I run an intrigue-rich Diceless Amber meets Dune game, where there are wheels within wheels and plans within plans, and so I expect gamers to miss a clue now and again.

But I am shocked, absolutely shocked, when guys who have been playing for years say things that tell me they have not been paying attention for years. One guy did not realize, for example, the city of Amber was on a mountain, even though Your Friendly Moderators gives him the same visual discription of what it looked like each time he sees it. Another guy thought that Azathoth, the infinite gods of madness and evil from the abyss beyond the Courts of Chaos, was harmless.

The worst part is whenever my player characters come across someone, like Lancelot, who is honest and brave, but who is simply NOT a modern liberal North American with modern liberal values. They were amazed that Lancelot (KING ARTHUR’S LANCELOT, gang, the GUY LOOKING FOR THE FREAKING HOLY GRAIL FER GOSSAKES) was a catholic Christian who took religion seriously, and did not think pagans and paynims had a right to destroy the faith.

The films are easier to keep track of than the books though – I had to keep flicking back and forth just to keep track of the endless characters with the extremely similar names (even worse in the Silmarillion!)

I still struggle with keeping track of who’s who in the Silmarillion. Doesn’t help that so many of the elves have similar names (was that Fingolfin, Finarfin or Finrod?). And the humans have Hurin and Huor and Turin and Tuor.

This was exactly the point in the books when I realised how “lost” I was.

things never did clear up until I reached this point again on my second reading. Or was it the third? Kind of amazing how the books were so enthralling even when the characters and geography were clear as calculus to a freshmna

Heh, if the hobbits are now NPC’s, just imagine the frustration of our plucky adventurers when, just as they are about to have TEH EPIC BATTLE at the Gates of Morannon … Frito the NPC drop-kicks the ring, and … GAME OVER!

John C.:[i]Heh, if the hobbits are now NPC's, just imagine the frustration of our plucky adventurers when, just as they are about to have TEH EPIC BATTLE at the Gates of Morannon … Frito the NPC drop-kicks the ring, and … GAME OVER![\i]

Most likely thsi will happen because the DM would have gotten bored of the game, he got a job or found a girlfriend.

Speaking of Call of Cthulhu, I once was GMing a group trying to play a 1920s, New England setted, CoC game as they play D&D. Before the game was even half-way over the whole lot of them were arrested for carrying deadly weapons without license, firing said unlicened weapons within city limits, breaking and entery, grand theft robbery of an archeological site, attempted selling of priceless historical artifacts at a pawn shop, fraud, solicitating prostitution, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, assaulting members of local police force with a deadly weapon, unlicened hunting of local wildlife, bootlegging,….. oh yes and statutory rape.

Roll20 said:
“Last time I DMed, I was fortunate to have interested players. Even so, while listening to their characters discuss recent events, I nearly axphixiated with keeping myself from blurting out corrections. At least I knew which red herrings they were fixated on, and could build them up appropriately.”

I pretty much stopped offering red herrings a long time ago. It wasted too much game time and the players didn’t like it when they realized how much time they had wasted following some false lead that =I= had provided them. It turned out better for enjoyment all around if the timewasting things they got stuck on were all of their own devising.

Last time i DMed i sent players on a rescue quest…
in their eagerness they forgot to ask any questions as to what the person they were rescuing looked like… i decided not to plant a moleish type charecter but if i run into somepeople like that again they are going to get stabbed in the back… reckless idiots…

I watched through all three extended movies a month back and because you posted that “They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard!” video, I can’t get through that scene with cracking a smile and thinking, “Yeah, it does sound a bit rhythmic, doesn’t it?”

Back when I was GMing a game of Dragon Mountain (add box set- basically a big fat lot of traps with kobolds worth virtually no xp and a dragon at the end)..

The players were suspicious of all the NPCs they found in the mountain that would willingly join the adventure. They (correctly) assumed one of them was the dragon in disguise (and also correctly assumed he would have magic resistance).

So – what was their solution? They would magic missile everyobody who joined their group.

This, however spread, to ANYone including party members who was separated for the merest of seconds.. oh you were in a differnt room to us – you could be the dragon.. magic missile him…

oh you fell behind in the corridor – magic missle

oh you had to do guard duty by yourself – magic missle.

you can see how it got out of hand…

Great campaign though. The party did more damage to themselves than te traps or kobolds could ever do.

And it never occurred to them that a shapeshifted dragon could just pretend to be injured by a magic missile? IIRC, dragons have pretty good Cha, and one that likes shapeshifting probably has ranks in Perform or Bluff too.

This is why Paranoia was and still is my favorite RPG to be GM during. If the players aren’t paying attention, well… they’re not going to get the info a second time, and if they mis-remember it they could wind up going to the wrong area, and getting disciplined for not going straight to their mission.

That, and the chance to give player characters private goals like “One of your team members is an unregistered mutant. Find it and kill all of its clones.”

“Heh, if the hobbits are now NPC's, just imagine the frustration of our plucky adventurers when, just as they are about to have TEH EPIC BATTLE at the Gates of Morannon … Frito the NPC drop-kicks the ring, and … GAME OVER!”

If Gandalf swooping in with the horse-f***ers pissed the players off then having the massed orcs at the Gates disappear into the ground will really make them want to murder something small and hobbit shaped

I love it when I let my players describe my plot to eachother. They sometimes come up with stuff that makes me go “Oh crap! That’s such a good idea I’m going to have to steal it! It makes so much more sense for that NPC to actually be evil\blonde\a werecow\whatever instead.”

So I steal their ideas (without letting them know of course), and they get to feel really clever for ‘figuring things out’.

In one game I ran, I had an NPC apprentice to a major NPC who in my notes was literally just a 1st level Sorceress that followed my major NPC around.
My players managed to convince themselves that she was actually a Dark Elf spy in a really good disguise and that they had to come up with really clever ways to exclude her from events until they could find evidence to expose her.

Best adventure my players ever DM’ed, that one. (I eventually let them ‘out’ her as a spy.)

Of course, this would be pretty hard to do when your plot is already there for you like the LotR or a published adventure. But then again, they’ve already killed Gollum…